half-hour, or ten minutes by ten minutes. Three divisions widely
separated provided all the work one war correspondent could do on one
day of action, and later news on a broader scale, could be obtained
from corps headquarters farther back. Tired, hungry, nerve-racked,
splashed to the eyes in mud, or covered in a mask of dust, we started
for the journey back to our own quarters, which we shifted from time
to time in order to get as near as we could to the latest battle-front
without getting beyond reach of the telegraph instruments--by relays
of despatch-riders--at "Signals," G. H. Q., which remained immovably
fixed in the rear.

There was a rendezvous in one of our rooms, and each man outlined the
historical narrative of the day upon the front he had covered,
reserving for himself his own adventures, impressions, and emotions.

Time slipped away, and time was short, while the despatch-riders
waited for our unwritten despatches, and censors who had been our
fellow-travelers washed themselves cleaner and kept an eye on the
clock.

Time was short while the world waited for our tales of tragedy or
victory . . . and tempers were frayed, and nerves on edge, among five
men who hated one another, sometimes, with a murderous hatred (though,
otherwise, good comrades) and desired one another's death by slow
torture or poison-gas when they fumbled over notes, written in a
jolting car, or on a battlefield walk, and went into past history in
order to explain present happenings, or became tangled in the numbers
of battalions and divisions.

Percival Phillips turned pink-and-white under the hideous strain of